Neural and peripheral markers of reward during positive social evaluation are associated with less clinician-rated depression symptom severity in adolescence

Zach J Gray; Grant S Shields; Stassja Sichko; Theresa Q Bui; Meghan Vinograd; Hector A Olvera-Alvarez; George M Slavich

doi:10.1016/j.cpnec.2022.100149

Neural and peripheral markers of reward during positive social evaluation are associated with less clinician-rated depression symptom severity in adolescence

Compr Psychoneuroendocrinol. 2022 Jun 16:11:100149. doi: 10.1016/j.cpnec.2022.100149. eCollection 2022 Aug.

Authors

Zach J Gray¹, Grant S Shields¹, Stassja Sichko², Theresa Q Bui³, Meghan Vinograd⁴, Hector A Olvera-Alvarez⁵, George M Slavich⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA.
² Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
³ Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA, USA.
⁴ Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health, VA San Diego Healthcare System, and Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA.
⁵ School of Nursing, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
⁶ Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Abstract

Although blunted sensitivity to reward is thought to play a key role in promoting risk for depression, most research on this topic has utilized monetary reward paradigms and focused on currently depressed adults. To address this issue, we analyzed neural reward and β-endorphin data from the Psychobiology of Stress and Adolescent Depression (PSY SAD) Study, which recruited a well-characterized sample of adolescent girls at high vs. low risk for major depressive disorder (MDD) (N = 52, M _age = 14.90, SD = 1.35) based on their mothers' lifetime history of MDD. As hypothesized, greater striatal activity while receiving positive (vs. neutral) social evaluation was associated with lower depression symptom severity as independently assessed by the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS). This association was present for girls at high but not low risk for MDD, suggesting that this neural response may represent a pre-clinical marker of risk for depression. Consistent with these results, higher post-social evaluation levels of a peripheral marker of reward sensitivity, β-endorphin, were related to lower clinician-rated depression symptom severity. Together, these results indicate that neural and peripheral markers of responsivity to social reward are both related to depression severity, which may have implications for understanding the pathophysiology of depression.

Keywords: Adolescence; Depression; Reward sensitivity; Social evaluation; Striatum; β-endorphin.